Kitchener Rangers too much for Saginaw Spirit in rout

SAGINAW, MI — If the Saginaw Spirit have many first periods in the playoffs like the one they had Friday, March 15 against Kitchener, their postseason stay will be brief.

Saginaw hosted the Rangers at The Dow Event Center and fell behind four minutes into the game when Josh Leivo beat Nikita Serebryakov for his 27th goal of the season, and Kitchener poured it on with four more first-period goals en route to a 7-1 win.

“We’ve been sloppy since we nailed down our playoff position,” Spirit coach Greg Gilbert said. “One thing we don’t understand as a group is we’re letting bad habits slip in. If we don’t clean it up this coming up week in practice, it won’t be a long first round.”

The Spirit fall to 32-29-3-3 with 70 points, with the Rangers improved to 39-19-1-8 with 87 points with one game remaining in the regular season for both teams.

Saginaw played lethargic all night with mental errors that put the Spirit in an early hole, despite the playoffs being right around the corner.

Curtis Meighan snapped a wristshot over Serebryakov’s right shoulder at 6:13 of the first period to make it 2-0, while Derek Schoenmakers added a goal two minutes later to give Kitchener a commanding 3-0 lead.

“It’s just the maturity level of our team,” Gilbert said. “They think it’s OK, that they have nothing to prove and nowhere to go. But they just let it play out and bad things happen. They creap in and they’re hard to correct.”

Leivo scored his second goal of the game with seven minutes remaining in the first before Saginaw found a bit of offense itself.

Nick Moutrey skated up through the zone for the Spirit and fired on Rangers goalie John Gibson, but Jimmy Lodge followed the play and snapped the rebound past Gibson to make it 4-1.

Kitchener pushed its lead to 5-1 late in the first after Brandon Prophet was sent to the box for highsticking. It took only 14 seconds of power play time for Matt Puempel to beat Serebryakov for his 33rd goal of the season.

Serebryakov settled in during the second period and the Spirit stepped up their offense to beat Kitchener in shots 17-8, but neither team could alter the scoreboard.

Puempel added his second goal of the game and 34th of the season 54 seconds into the third period to make it 6-1 Kitchener, and he got the hat trick four minutes later to cap the scoring.

“We haven’t lost anything, we’ve just gotten sloppy,” Gilbert said. “There’s no motivation, and that’s not an excuse. It’s about learning how to be a professional. Whether you’re in the playoffs or out of the playoffs, you better battle to the last second.”

The Spirit have one regular season game to get it turned around when they host London on Saturday, March 16 before embarking on the playoffs next Friday against the Knights.

“We’ve got some guys that may not be playing tomorrow because they’re not ready to play,” Gilbert said. “They’ve got to prove they can do it, and if they can’t, then we’ve got our answers on who is going to start next Friday in London.”